Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...for finished goods. A nation that possesses within its own national bounds great natural resources and at the same time has developed its industrial, transportation, and trading resources to a high degree, is in a most fortunate position. Perhaps of all the nations in the world, the United States today is the one that this description most nearly fits. Other nations may have as great agricultural, mineral, and forest resources as we have, but they are new in industry and lack adequate facilities of manufacture, transportation, and trade. Still other nations have these latter facilities developed to as great degree as we have--in some cases, it may be, to a greater degree--but they lack the nearby natural resources. No matter how balanced may be its resources, however, it is difficult to find a nation that has no need of outside products. In our own case, for Always a, Tt i n Demand for example, the United States pro-Outside products duces no rubber, no coffee, no tea, no cocoa, no ivory. We have to import hundreds of such products as these. More-over, there are hundreds of other products which we can produce but which we find it preferable to get from abroad. We buy hides from the Argentine, though we are perfectly capable of raising enough to supply our own needs. We get wool from Australia, though we used to raise our own wool. Other occupations have lured many of our people from cattle raising (and from sheep raising, and so with numerous other lines. Just as the individual manufacturer finds it more profitable to buy his fuel and raw material, instead of trying to extract them himself from the ground, so the nation as an industrial unit frequently finds it a better plan to buy certain products, even though they may be products which it could...show more